This website is a collection of my writings which primarily deals with issues of political and socio-economic issues in the Caribbean.
It also contains links to important resources on the region and it's people.

Friday, February 21, 2014

The media coverage of the events unfolding in Venezuela provides a
troubling example of how the imperial ambitions of the United States can
magnify crises—especially when contrasted with the current political
situation in Haiti.

Both Venezuela and Haiti have been facing anti-government protests,
with the respective oppositions citing poor leadership, corruption,
electoral fraud, and a deteriorating economy as their primary
motivations in calling for change. However, the international media’s
escalation of the Venezuelan crisis and their complete silence when it
comes to Haiti, raises some important questions about the United States’
inconsistency in upholding the values of human rights and democracy.

Haiti has been enduring a political crisis since the highly
controversial election of President Michel Martelly, who received his
mandate from only 16.7 percent of registered voters,
and has been running the country without a fully functioning government
in order to avoid dealing with constitutionally mandated checks and
balances. For the third year in a row, Martelly has promised to hold elections to fill legislative and local seats without yet following through.

As evidence of Martelly’s unbridled commitment to democracy, instead
of holding elections for mayors whose terms expired in 2012, he
personally handpicked the representatives, appointing them
as “municipal agents.” As a result of Martelly’s political inaction on
the national level, one third of the seats in the Haitian Senate remain empty.
This congressional inability to establish quorum on issues of national
importance has been particularly convenient for the President. In
September 2013, the Senate put forward a resolution
to indict President Martelly, Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe, and the
Minister of Justice Jean Renel Sanon for high treason, lying to the
public, and playing a harmful role in the death of Judge Jean Serge
Joseph.

Earlier in 2013, Judge Joseph had been given the task of overseeing a high profile corruption investigation against President Michel Martelly’s wife Sophia and their son Olivier. Judge Joseph had reported receiving threats
to dismiss the corruption case during a meeting with Martelly, the
Prime Minister, and the Minister of Justice and Public Security. Joseph
refused, and two days later he died under suspicious circumstances.

Because the Haitian Senate has only 16 of 30 members currently
active, the impeachment vote was not passed on a technicality. This was
in spite of the decision, which saw 7 of the 16 members vote in favor of Martelly’s impeachment, with 9 abstentions and 0 voting against the motion. According to the Haitian Constitution,
abstentions do not count as votes—with Article 117 stating that “All
acts of the Legislature must be approved by a majority of the members present [emphasis added].” Thus, in regular circumstances
the decision by the Senate would move forward with the impeachment.
Therefore, this purposefully fragmented political system does a great
deal to serve the interests of impunity.

This political crisis is especially worrying when the murder of
opposition leaders in Haiti has gone largely unreported in the
international press. Most recently, on February 8, Daniel Dorsainvil,
one of Haiti’s leading human rights activists and his wife Girldy
Lareche were gunned down in Port au Prince. While conflicted motives for
the shooting have emerged, Haiti’s human rights community fears that
the murders were politically motivated. Dorsainvil was the Coordinator
of the Platform for Haitian Organizations for the Defense of Human Rights (POHDH). POHDH was established after the coup d’état of Jean Bertrand Aristide in 1991. According to POHDH’s website,
“The systematic suppression of the military against the democratic and
popular movement, which followed this event, and the mass amount of
human rights violations in general, was the motivation for social and
community development organizations to regroup with the purpose of
initiating actions specifically in the field of human rights.”

A civil engineer by training, Dorsainvil had been a tireless advocate
for justice, routinely speaking out against the Martelly government for
its disregard of human rights, political scandals, and the consistent
delaying of elections. Dorsainvil’s latest initiative
was the establishment of the Patriotic People's Democratic Movement
(MPDP), a group of thirty political and social organizations openly
standing in opposition to Martelly’s government. While this attack is
tragic on its own, it comes after numerous threats against Haitian human
rights defenders such as Patrice Florvilus, Mario Joseph, and André
Michel.

In May 2013, Patrice Florvilus, the Executive Director of Defenders of the Oppressed, was subjected to numerous death threats. Margaret Satterthwaite, Director of the Global Justice Clinic at New York University School of Law, remarked:

The targeting of Patrice Florvilus and
other attorneys demonstrates a troubling pattern of state obstruction
of legitimate human rights work in Haiti…The government’s use of state
institutions such as law enforcement, and its failure to address
judicial and extra-legal threats leave human rights defenders
dangerously exposed. All sectors of the government, from the police to
the courts, are responsible for safeguarding human rights.

Due to the neglect and failure of the Haitian government to protect Florvilus and his family from attacks, he has had to relocate to Montreal in December 2013.

In October 2013, human rights lawyer Andre Michel was arrested
by the Haitian National Police due to his initiation of legal
proceedings against Martelly’s wife and son related to charges of
corruption, which Judge Joseph oversaw before his death. Haitian human
rights organizations condemned the arrest as an arbitrary and
politically motivated attempt to intimidate human rights activists and
members of the opposition.

Thus, while Martelly was praised by President Obama in early February for his leadership, Haiti has also seen a slew of anti-government protests
due to the political crisis, human rights abuses, and economic decline.
The lack of media attention regarding Martelly’s consistent attacks on
popular organizations and human rights defenders in Haiti, in contrast
to Venezuela is a stark reminder of how abuses of power can be
marginalized if one has influential friends in the right places.

The media bias facing Venezuela—be it due to Venezuela’s fervent
anti-U.S. policy and rhetoric, or the fact that it sits on the largest
oil reserves in the hemisphere—allows the United States to shape public
perception toward the country on its own strategic terms. In the absence
of this insistence on sovereignty, human rights abuses and the
suspension of political liberties can continue indefinitely in Haiti—as
long as the government is set on accommodating the interests of the
United States instead of challenging them.